The sudden chart influx of holiday singles: It’s not just for Christmas anymore! This week’s edition of the Billboard Hot 100 really captures the music that people were listening to a week and a half ago, which means it’s got a bunch of songs that were on Halloween playlists. The biggest of those Halloween songs is Michael Jackson’s 1982 spooktacular “Thriller,” which is currently the #10 single in America. That means that Jackson, who has been dead for 16 years, is now the first artist ever to score top-10 hits in six different decades.
As Billboard reports, Jackson’s arcane new chart record moves him out of a tie with Andy Williams, who died in 2012 and who had top-10 hits in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’10s, and ’20s. Williams was able to extend his hit streak after his death because he made “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year,” another holiday song that keeps returning to the Hot 100 every year. Maybe “Thriller” will be like that. Maybe it’ll just crash the charts again every Halloween season. Maybe four years from now, the fourth quarter of every year will just be eaten up by “Thriller” and “All I Want For Christmas Is You” sitting at #1.
As Billboard notes, Michael Jackson scored his first top-10 hit as a little-kid solo artist in 1971, when his first-ever solo single “Got To Be There” peaked at #4. “Thriller” itself also peaked at #4 in 1984. Jackson has landed 30 top-10 hits over the course of his career. Before “Thriller” made its big return, Jackson’s most recent top-10 hit was his posthumous feature on Drake’s “Don’t Matter To Me” in 2018.
We’ve got some other Halloween songs in this week’s Hot 100, too: Bobby “Boris” Pickett And The Crypt-Kickers’ “Monster Mash” at #21, Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” at #22, Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” at #24, and the Nightmare Before Christmas song “This Is Halloween” at #26. Maybe we should also count Tame Impala’s “Dracula” at #30 and Lady Gaga’s “The Dead Dance” at #57, even though both of those songs came out in the past few months. Maybe next year, we could get the Ramones’ “Pet Sematary” or Goblin’s “Suspiria” on there.
Also, please not that Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is already on the Hot 100 at #31. Get ready to hear that song one million times in the next six weeks.
